Fork In The Fondue
by Ivy Leaves
Summary: Our fave five take a night out on town and go to a fondue restaurant, but some things are not as cheesy as they seem...Pun Intended.


Fork In The Fondue

Fork In The Fondue 

"Fondue Fork?" Jamie read, looking up at the sign. "That's called cheesy." Caitie, Val, and Tyler cracked up. "What?" asked an annoyed Jamie.

"Well, cheese, fondue…" Tyler explained. Jamie rolled his eyes and grinned.

"It got good reviews," Val informed them. The quintet was testing the newest restaurant in Kingsport—a fondue shop, no less. Caitie and Jamie agreed to come on the condition the overachievers paid for it. With the bill split three ways and Fondue Fork not overly expensive, the others agreed.

"Yeah, well, so did Superman, but that movie sucks," Caitie said bluntly. All three guys stared at her with open mouths. "What? It did."

"Caitie," Val whispered loudly, "I think the guys think it's macho. You're treading on Guy Turf. Remember, they watch Jackie Chan."

"Val, you like Jackie Chan." Caitie turned to Val. "You took karate from third to seventh grade, remember? You were a purple belt." The males looked at the cheerleader, amazed.

"You were a purple belt?" Tyler asked. Val turned red.

"Yeah. Then I broke my leg practicing for my black belt test and—well, I think we're, sort of, um, late for our reservation, aren't we?" she inquired anxiously. Jamie looked at his watch at the same time Tyler and Hank, interested, looked at theirs. The watches that had told so many times of death now told Val's fate.

"We have five more minutes," Hank informed her.

"Well, we should be early," Val decided, nodding and pulling open the door. "Yeah. Early is good."

The others followed her in.

"Dang," Jamie whispered to Tyler, "you'd better not try to make a move on her."

Tyler scowled at him and then replied, "I took karate for two years. I barely got to yellow belt."

Jamie grinned and made karate chop motions in the air.

*

"Monsieur, Monsieur, Monsieur, Madame, et Madame." The waiter, a young man about twenty-four with short, bleached blond spikes, gestured to the table. "Es heureux."

"You've never taken French, have you?" Jamie accused the waiter as he sat down.

"Uh, nah, not really," admitted the waiter, falling back into American English.

Jamie and Hank looked at each other before saying in unison, "Monsieur, Monsieur, e-noon-see-ate. Le mot venirait ta bouche comme un drapeau dans l'air." Their play on Monsieur LeBon drew laughs from the others, who had gotten acquainted with LeBon on a call.

"Well, anyway, tell me if I may be of service. My name is Chad; and before you ask, I'm not hanging, dimpled, or pregnant; and I am your waiter this evening."

"No, really?" Jamie asked in mock wonderment. Caitie elbowed him. Hard.

"Dude, funny. Real funny. Now, I'm leaving now. See you in a few." Chad nodded, gave them a thumbs-up, and left.

"My kind of man," Jamie said with approval. "I didn't know punks worked here."

"You don't know that he's a punk," Val informed him. "He may be an overachiever like us."

"Nah," Caitie and Jamie said at once. Jamie explained, "That is the kind of person who looks very much at home in a Metallica tank. And overachievers don't usually end up working at Fondue Fork in their hometown."

"And he goes to Godsmack concerts," coughed Caitie.

"And you would know because…?" Tyler asked. The brunette looked around with feigned innocence.

"I don't like Godsmack, you know, and I only went to the concert because Jamie forced me to." Caitie glared at Jamie.

"I only went because Kenny was going," Jamie argued. "I don't like them either."

By this time the others were cracking up.

"Tell me, did you spend the entire time making out?" teased Val. They both glared at her with dark eyes.

"Um…who wants to order?"

*

"You know, we should go see a movie after this," Hank suggested. "And Jamie and Caitie can sit together and make out and Val and Tyler can sit together and make out and I can have everyone's popcorn," Hank said devilishly. Four equally red faces looked at him with annoyance. He shrugged. "Just a suggestion."

"Oh, great," said Val, annoyed even more. "Now you made me drop my stupid bread."

"Do you think it's left or right?" Jamie asked Caitie. She thought a moment and then smiled.

"Left. Definitely left."

"What's left?" Val inquired, jabbing another piece of bread onto her fork.

"Well, if you drop your fondue, then you have to kiss the person on your…well, we're not sure if it's left or right, but we think that left would be best in this case," explained Jamie, grinning a smile equal in mischief to Caitie. Val widened her eyes and looked to her left. Tyler.

"_Him?" _Her jaw was hanging open. "I have to kiss_ him?" _

"Thank you, that made me feel good," Tyler said dryly.

"Sorry," she apologized, then turning back to the grinning duo. "And why might I have to kiss him?"

"Tradition," was Caitie's smiling answer. "And for the fun of it, let's say on the lips. At all times." The grins grew bigger, and one started on Hank's face as well.

"Um…sorry about this," Tyler directed to Val, turning an interesting shade of pink.

"It's all right." Oh, she was going to get Jamie and Caitie later. This was both highly embarrassing and…well, very highly embarrassing. Admittedly, she would like to kiss Tyler, but under more private circumstances, thank you very much. Val looked again at the Cheshire cats before gently reaching out to touch Tyler's face as their lips connected.

"Oh, sick," groaned Jamie, shielding his eyes. "This wasn't such a good idea after all." Val and Tyler seemed to be getting very into the tradition, as was indicated by the way Tyler was wrapping his hands around Val's jaw-line and the way Val's arms were going around Tyler's neck and the way they were deepening the kiss like there was no tomorrow.

"Guys, I don't know if we should be watching this," Hank said nearly a minute and a half later. "I mean, they're going to probably beat us up later."

"Wait, I think they're using their tongues," Caitie noted with interest, leaning forward. She, at least, was absolutely captivated by this. Jamie peeked from the holes in between his fingers and smiled with an idea, taking his hands (which weren't really serving their purpose, as his fingers were spread apart and they made convenient peepholes) off of his eyes.

"Look."

He reached out and pushed back Val's chair so that it was tilting. A small shove, and—

"Aiee!" Val and Tyler both landed on the floor. Groans and moans and lots of ouches could be heard before two pairs of blue eyes appeared on the edge of the table. The brown eyes opposite them widened in fear. Hank interrupted the war of the optical organs.

"You know, I think I could do with some more Coke," he informed them. Val and Tyler picked up their chairs and sat down on them firmly, grinning like imbeciles, to put it bluntly.

"Tell me, Val, what's the Quadratic Formula?" Jamie questioned. 

Val looked at him weirdly before saying, "X equals negative b plus or minus square root of b squared minus four ac, all over two a. No duh, Jamie."

"I was just making sure that no brain cells had been lost in the suspended time of lack of oxygen," Jamie said sweetly. Val and Tyler rolled their eyes.

"Yeah, so Tyler, what's the point-slope intercept form again?" Caitie asked.

Val leaned over and whispered into Tyler's ear.

"I don't even want to know what they're talking about," groaned Jamie. "I'm feeling nauseating pain already."

But no, there didn't seem to be any indication that it was something that would cause Jamie to hurl, because all Tyler did was take his fondue fork and plunge into the molten cheese, spearing Caitie's piece of bread.

"Hey!" She pulled at her fork and the bread came off of it. Holding up her fork, she glared at Tyler. "Jeez, what was that for?"

Tyler handed the bread to Val. "You seem to have lost your fondue."

"And that," continued Val, "means you have to kiss the person on your left." She smiled indulgently as she glanced to Jamie on Caitie's left.

"But it was taken! It didn't fall off!" Caitie protested.

"Look at your fork. Is there anything on it?" asked Val. Caitie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Ha. So kiss Jamie."

"He's my best friend," whined Caitie. "That's not right!"

"Tyler's my friend, but I kissed_ him," _Val pointed out. "How is that different?"

"Well, everyone knows you like Tyler, and everyone knows he likes you, and everyone knows you flirt with each other all the time."

"And you and Jamie don't?" Tyler asked. Val grinned.

"Oh fine," Caitie said sulkily, kissing Jamie on his cheek.

"Nope," he said, turning her face as she began to sit up again with pink-tinged cheeks, "on the lips."

He took control of the tradition, kissing her lightly. Caitie, whom no one thought could honestly blush, was now scarlet.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" he asked. Caitie smiled.

A lot more pieces of bread were lost in the cheese.

The only problems occurred when Tyler lost his piece of bread and when Hank lost his.

"I am under no circumstances kissing Hank and no one here is going to make me," Tyler said stubbornly.

"You know, it might be right," Jamie said. "We can pretend it's right."

And no one argued with that as Tyler and Val went into another kiss. Then Hank lost his, but he merely "passed it on" to Caitie, who in turn kissed Jamie.

The rest of the night went smoothly.

"Um, I don't think there's any more cheese to lose our bread in," Jamie noted, poking the pot. "And we ran out of bread a while ago."

"We did?" Val asked, pulling away from Tyler. They had sort of gotten lost in a super-long kiss somewhere along the way.

"Yeah. We've been taking out bread and dropping it," Jamie told them, still poking at the cheese with his fork.

"And I'll be taking that," said Chad as he came over to their table, turning off the burner and picking up the pot with oven mitts.

"Hey, dude, I like the hand gear," Jamie said with a grin. "Il est tres beau sur tes mains."

"Oh, sure, rub it in," scowled Chad. "I'll bring your check out in a minute unless you want dessert?"

"No," they chorused.

"Hank, that movie sounded sort of like a good idea," Val said. The majority of the bread in the pot was hers and Tyler's due to Caitie and Jamie's ironic embarrassment, but they were still up for making up for lost time.

"What? Oh, sure, but I get your popcorn. Want to see A Knight's Tale? There's an 8:30 showing," said Hank, taking the napkin off of his lap.

"Ooh, Heath Ledger," Val smiled. Tyler and Jamie rolled their eyes, the movement caught by Val. "Oh, come on, it's not like I'm ever going to kiss Heath Ledger."

"Well, that's what you said about Tyler," Caitie reminded her, "and you two are making out very enthusiastically."

"Shut up." Val's cheeks were pink. Tyler smiled.

"This is the bill," Chad informed them, returning. Jamie gaped falsely.

"You don't say." His voice was overly awed.

"Dude, just because we went to the same Godsmack concert doesn't mean that I necessarily like you," Chad said.

"I don't even like Godsmack," argued Jamie. "I only went because a friend of mine begged me to."

"Uh huh." Chad didn't exactly sound like he believed the teen. "I'll run the credit card through the machine and be right back," said Chad to Hank, taking the card.

"You guys can just pay me back," Hank notified Val and Tyler, who were looking very confused.

"Sure, that's great," agreed Tyler as Chad came back very speedily with the credit card.

*

"So…I didn't know you were a purple belt," Tyler said, trying to start a conversation with Val as they walked out of the restaurant a little behind the others.

"It's not a fact I advertise," Val nodded. "Everyone wants to see if they can beat me."

"I think you should be proud of your accomplishment, though. I mean, that's really fantastic. I tried karate once and only just passed the yellow belt test," he admitted.

"At least you passed it, though, right? I mean, you could have stayed at white belt. Why weren't you good at it?" she asked curiously.

"I guess I couldn't find enough inner peace with a crush on a very amazing girl in sixth grade," Tyler replied, taking her hand gently.

"You haven't known me since sixth grade," Val reminded him, stopping as she turned to him. "We met in ninth grade."

"Yeah, well, it was worth a try. You ever heard Savage Garden?" he asked, leaning in closer.

"Of course."

"'I knew I loved you before I met you, I have been waiting all my life…'" Tyler said softly as he kissed her.

"Oi, you two lovebirds! We're_ waiting!" _yelled Jamie. Tyler and Val broke, smiled at each other, and ran to catch up.

"So you're glad we came for dinner here, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Well…it was a free dinner for us."

"Oh, come on."

"Come on what?"

"Admit it. You had fun."

"When it all boils down, everything's just another fork in the fondue."

The laughter echoed down the street.

Okay, you have to admit it was funny. The last part was sort of more mushy than funny, but the rest was hilarious, right? Right? Now, I'm counting on LOTS OF REVIEWS. Lots with a double capital L and capital OTS, got it? Good. J So…REVIEW. Now. Please?

---Ivy Leaves


End file.
